By African
American Policy Forum
Monday, July 13, 2015.
As we grieve for the
nine African Americans who were murdered in their house of worship on June 17
2015, those of us who answer the call of feminism and antiracism must confront
anew how the evils of racism and patriarchy continue to endanger all Black
bodies, regardless of gender.
As antiracists, we know that the struggle against
racial terror is older than the Republic itself. In particular we remember the
work of Ida B Wells who risked everything to debunk the lies of lynchers over
100 years ago. Today, we see that fierce determination in Bree Newsome who
scaled the 30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina state Capitol and brought
down the Confederate flag. As feminists, we recognize how racism has been —
and is still — gendered. Patriarchy continues to be foundational to racial
terrorism in the US, both in specious claims that justify the torture of Black
men in defense of white womanhood, and in its brutal treatment of Black women
and girls. We also recognize that while patriarchy and racism are clearly
intertwined, all too often, our struggles against them are not.
If the reaction to the Charleston massacre is to be
realized as something beyond a singular moment of redemptive mourning, then
neither the intersectional dynamics of racism and patriarchy which produced
this hateful crime, nor the inept rhetorical politics that sustain the
separation of feminism from antiracism, can be allowed to continue.
As antiracist feminists of every color, we refute the patriarchal,
racist practices that endanger Black people across the nation. In so doing, we
also insist that the extremism of Roof’s declaration that Black people “must
go” because they are “taking over our country” and “raping our women” should
not obscure how anti-Black racial logics are embedded in the routine decisions
made by millions of people every day. Decisions about where to live, how to
identify a “safe neighborhood” or a “good school,” whom to police, and to whom
police are to be accountable, also rest on a longstanding demonization of Black
bodies. These choices, grounded in ideologies of Black threat, frame separation
from Blackness as a rational choice. The narratives that routinely diminish the
life chances of African Americans are not yesterday’s problems. Dylann Roof was
born in 1994, yet murdered nine Black people having thoroughly consumed narratives
that continue to denigrate Black people over half a century after the supposed
fall of white supremacy. The continued assault on Black churches–several
which have been burned to the ground since the Charleston Massacre–tells us
that even the most extreme expressions of this denigration are not isolated.
We must recognize, at last, that racial violence, including the cycle of
suffering and slow death that hovers over Black communities, is structural as
well as individual. Equally significant, racial violence has never been focused
on males alone. A clear indication of the way that white insecurities can
unleash murderous impulses against all Black people, is that Roof murdered six
Black women as well as three Black men. In his perceived defense of white women,
Roof killed Black mothers, grandmothers, sisters, wives and daughters. To
would-be purveyors of Black genocide, there are no collateral victims. Every
Black body is a threat; every dead one is one step closer to their ultimate
goal.
Feminists must denounce the use of white insecurity
— whether in relation to white womanhood, white neighborhoods, white politics,
or white wealth — to justify the brutal assaults against Black people of all
genders. Antiracists must acknowledge that patriarchy has long been a weapon of
racism and cannot sit comfortably in any politic of racial transformation. We
must all stand against both the continual, systematic and structural racial
inequities that normalize daily violence as well as against extreme acts of
racial terror. Policy and movement responses that fail to reflect an
intersectional approach are doomed to fail. We want a loving community across
difference. In the memory of Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Clementa Pinckney,
Tywanza Sanders, Cynthia Hurd, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Depayne
Middleton-Doctor, Daniel Simmons Jr. and Myra Thompson, we commit to a vibrant,
inclusive, and intersectional social justice movement that condemns racist
patriarchy and works to end its daily brutality and injustice. Anything less is
unacceptable.
Click Here to sign the
statement
The Charleston Imperative: Why Feminism & Antiracism Must Be Linked
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